I don't follow. This passage implies that this is supposed to work (except on "some old translators"), but it contradicts the bulk of the document which states that paragraphs must be followed by (actually, terminated with) a blank line.

I was indeed reading the fine manual, read it end to end several times, and cross-checked versions 10.1 and the current 12.whatever. My observation stands: the example which is implied to work as-is on current translators contradicts the description given earlier. If it's not intended to work, why explain that it must be changed for "older" parsers? If it never works at all, it's a silly thing to say.

I think I can afford the -- vote. But I think it's unwarranted, after re-reading my post.

> perldoc perlpod |grep -2n " empty "|sed 's/ / /'
488-
489- You can embed Pod documentation in your Perl modules and scripts+.
490: Start your documentation with an empty line, a "=head1" command +at the
491: beginning, and end it with a "=cut" command and an empty line. +Perl
492- will ignore the Pod text. See any of the supplied library modul+es for
493- examples. If you’re going to put your Pod at the end of the fil+e, and
--
501- Time::Local - efficiently compute time from local and GMT time
502-
503: Without that empty line before the "=head1", many translators wo+uldn’t
504- have recognized the "=head1" as starting a Pod block.
505-
--
553- · Some older Pod translators require paragraphs (including com+mand
554- paragraphs like "=head2 Functions") to be separated by compl+etely
555: empty lines. If you have an apparently empty line with some+ spaces
556- on it, this might not count as a separator for those transla+tors,
557- and that could cause odd formatting.